Various stages of crisis management are dependent on the
specific nature of the accident. The essential variable is not,
however, the magnitude of the crisis but the nature of
"responsible" organizations involved. The management of
a crisis that involves corporate responsibility will be
essentially legal in nature, assuming that the corporate
entity does not enjoy political (i.e. governmental) support. If,
however, the "responsible" party is a
government-controlled body, then the management of the crisis
will be primarily, though not exclusively, political in
nature. In simple terms, it is relatively easy to litigate
against a corporate entity but far more difficult to sue a
government.

Surprisingly, the character of the extant political system
(e.g. democratic, totalitarian) probably has little impact on
crisis management. The fact that the Chernobyl disaster occurred
in the Soviet Union, a quasi-totalitarian state with a lengthy
record of abuse of human rights, may not have been especially
significant. The democratic government of the United States has
proved notoriously capricious in similar cases, and the results
of the Windscale disaster in Britain were classified for 30 years
by order of the British government on the pretext that
revelations about the accident might prejudice the US-UK
alliance. It is also extremely difficult to achieve a legal
settlement that pins blame on a government.

The political and legal responses of governments faced with
crises like Chernobyl are remarkably similar. Typically, they
deny the magnitude of the crisis and attempt to conceal or
classify pertinent data, particularly that which relates to the
short- and long-term health effects of that crisis. Governments
do not willingly accept either legal or operational culpability
for a disaster. In the case of Chernobyl, it is only within the
past few years that the governments of Belarus and Ukraine have
issued legal documents about compensation for residents of
contaminated communities. The Soviet government never accepted
full responsibility for the consequences of Chernobyl, especially
its international aspects, which included a radioactive cloud
that crossed Europe and caused extensive harm to communities in
northern Scandinavia, southern Germany, and the uplands of
Britain. In refusing to take the blame, the Soviet regime was
following a path trodden by previous national governments.

Victims also have a role to play in crisis management.
"Victim action" is a recurrent theme here, in both
political and legal terms. Victim action can involve everything
from a single individual all the way up to large-scale
non-governmental organizations such as the OECD (Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development) or IAEA. But the same
dynamic of interest groups and action is at work here also. In
the case of Chernobyl, it is hardly surprising that the Ukrainian
Green World environmental association took a far dimmer view of
the accident than did the IAEA, whose mandate includes not only
the international regulation of the nuclear power and nuclear
weapons industries, but also the promotion of nuclear power.

In the same way, the response of the Ukrainian government to
Chernobyl is best explained by political motives, or else by
response to the existing political realities. Although the
ramifications of Chernobyl were felt first in Ukraine, rather
than in distant Moscow, the "victim" government chose
not only to side with the responsible government (USSR), which
ran the ministries responsible for construction of nuclear plants
and nuclear energy production, but declined to take any
significant form of independent action, including the prompt
evacuation of villages and settlements near the damaged reactor.
Perception plays a crucial role in the management of a crisis by
victims as well as perpetrators.

Though not truly independent, the mass media comprise another
important factor in crisis management. Despite suggestions to the
contrary (e.g. the film The China Syndrome), the media
rarely uncover a large-scale industrial accident. The
media are mainly a reactive force, obliged to depend - often
heavily - on information supplied by sources closely associated
with the accident. As these situations are fast moving and
rapidly changing, the media often report information which, under
normal circumstances, they would reject as unsound or
uncorroborated. During a rapidly unfolding crisis in which
official information is severely restricted, the media may
abdicate the editorial duties of weighing and assessing the value
of information gained, preferring to resort to inflammatory
headlines.39 How this occurred in the case of
Chernobyl was illustrated by Time magazine:

A Dutch amateur radio enthusiast reported picking up a
broadcast in which a distraught ham operator near Chernobyl
announced that two units were ablaze and spoke of "many
hundreds dead and wounded." In [this] account, the man
cried, "We heard heavy explosions! You can't imagine
what's happening here with all the deaths and fire.... I
don't know if our leaders know what to do because this is a
real disaster. Please tell the world to help us."

In the absence of any Soviet description of events at the
time, this dramatic but unconfirmed account was seized on by the
media and widely carried (Time, 12 May 1986: 28-29).

Sensational accounts sell copy, and few Western newspapers
were immune to the tendency to indulge in hyperbolic descriptions
of what was occurring at Chernobyl, as long as the authorities
within the Soviet Union declined to present an alternative
picture. The drab and censorious statement from Moscow -
"Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of
the accident" - was a further factor in catalysing the
furore in the West, and was equally misleading.

It is, therefore, clear that a large-scale "model"
industrial accident is impossible to quantify. Much depends on
the actions of responsible parties and the reaction of the
victims. The key question is not how an accident is managed, but
why it is managed in a particular fashion. The interest groups
involved in any industrial accident fall into three categories -
those deemed responsible (operators, plant managers); those
deemed affected (victims); and an uncertain group, the media. In
most industrial accidents the actions of each group are
remarkably consistent and follow an identifiable pattern of
conflict and, it is hoped, resolution. This section briefly
examines the actions of the three key groups in some industrial
accidents, both within the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

The accident at the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear plant in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, occurred at 4 a.m. on 28 March 1979.
The company responsible for the plant's operation (Metropolitan
Edison) released little information about the accident in the
first hours and days after its occurrence. The evidence suggests
that the company knew the accident was very serious, involving a
partial core meltdown and failure of the primary containment
vessel, with subsequent leakage of radioactive material into the
reactor building. They would also have been aware that the
reactor building was unlikely to prevent further leakage into the
outside atmosphere (Rubin 1982: 131-141). Indeed, it is widely
believed that Metropolitan Edison already knew that radioactive
particles were entering the atmosphere even as they held their
first news conference about 12 hours after the accident. Yet they
decided not to inform the public of this fact. Later, when
pressed, an official of the company admitted that he had not
mentioned any releases into the environment "because he had
not been asked directly about them" (Rubin 1982: 133).

One critic has pointed out that this reticence broke the first
rule of effective public relations: when the news is bad, it
should be published in full as quickly as possible (Rubin 1982:
133). Nevertheless, the Metropolitan Edison company chose to
withhold information that was perceived as being in the vital
interests of the general public once it finally became available.
This produced a cascade effect in the company's dealings with the
media in particular and the public in general. Once people
realized that they had been deceived, they were less inclined to
accept any information subsequently released by the company. A
confrontational stance was preferred.

A US government study released after the accident found that
the situation worsened when some officials of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) chose to support Metropolitan
Edison's position and adopted an "optimistic tone,"
despite the fact that news about the seriousness of the accident
was already surfacing in the media (President's Commission on the
Accident at Three Mile Island 1979). With the credibility of both
Metropolitan Edison and the NRC damaged, pro-nuclear interest
groups suffered a major public relations setback from which they
never recovered. Anti-nuclear sentiments could now be voiced in a
more confident way. As David M. Rubin pointed out, "One way
or another the reporters were going to get a story. If the
utility was not going to provide facts (as it did not), reporters
would turn to other sources" (Rubin 1982: 136).

Information about TMI that appeared in the media therefore
consisted of "informed speculation," often from sources
within the antinuclear movement and often of an alarmist
character. Since the information was not printed with any
qualification, the public was unable to determine its accuracy.
Moreover, the media had not reported on nuclear accidents
hitherto and so had little experience in evaluating the
information they were disseminating. One result was widespread
confusion and long-term distrust of the nuclear energy industry.

Despite the blunder committed by officials from both
Metropolitan Edison and the NRC, the practice of downplaying
accidents continues in the nuclear industry. As far as possible,
spokespersons for nuclear installations tend to minimize the
seriousness of accidents and maintain a "healthy
optimism" about efforts to "remove (the)
consequences." The TMI experience illustrated a problem
involving the accurate communication of information in an
emergency. This legacy soon had reverberations. In March 1981,
when there was a serious leakage of radioactive waste water from
a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, Japan, the operating company
did not disclose the seriousness of the accident until radiation
was detected in a nearby bay six weeks later (Time, 12 May
1986).

The response of the international nuclear energy industry to
Chernobyl is particularly instructive because it demonstrates how
an embattled industry sought to minimize the repercussions of a
disaster. The industry adopted three different interpretations of
the accident and shifted among them as they became untenable. In
every case, criticisms were launched against vocal groups opposed
to nuclear energy, accusing them of scaremongering, alarmism, and
a lack of expertise. These groups, for their part, labelled the
nuclear industry's attempts to downplay the magnitude of the
crisis as "chicanery" and "duplicity."

The first interpretive strategy appeared immediately after the
accident at Chernobyl became known in the West. Technical
analyses of the accident were extremely conservative. For
example, the June 1986 issue of Atom, the magazine of the
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), reported that a
"significant radiation release occurred" at Chernobyl.
But, reassuringly, it was immediately stressed that the
"reactor is of a unique design not found outside the USSR.
Its safety and operating characteristics are quite unlike those
of any UK reactor" (Atom No. 356, June 1986: 29). As
if this was not calming enough, the subsequent issue of the
magazine contained a report written by Dr. J.H. Gittus, the
Director of the UKAEA's Safety and Reliability Directorate, that
discussed the radioactive plume released from Chernobyl and
carried by wind over Britain. Gittus concluded that:

The real difference between the [radiation] exposures
from natural background and from the Chernobyl accident is
that those from Chernobyl will cease in a relatively short
time; those from background sources will continue forever and
are part and parcel of man's natural environment. (Atom
No. 357, July 1986: 17)

Again, this sort of response follows the pattern seen at TMI:
optimistic predictions about the accident were made with the
objective of defusing the issues.

A concomitant tactic in this sort of response is to denigrate
authors of conflicting views. Thus, reviewers in Atom were
busy excoriating some of the "instant books" on
Chernobyl that appeared in the summer of 1986. One, written by a
team of journalists from the London Observer, was reviewed
as follows: "It would be nice to describe this book on the
Chernobyl accident as the 'worst book in the world'. [A play on
the book's title, The Worst Accident in the World.] But it
is merely one in a long tradition of anti-nuclear 'horror' books
that manipulates facts and superstition towards the writers'
apparent end of ridding the world of nuclear power" (Atom
No. 359, September 1986: 27). Professor Jovan Jovanovich of
the University of Manitoba, the lone Canadian representative on
an international advisory committee to the IAEA, referred to what
he termed "horror stories" about the disaster as
"trash" (Winnipeg Free Press, 23 May 1991). His
concern was that the media had sensationalized the consequences
of Chernobyl but, in making his allegations, he may have
underestimated the extent of the effects of the disaster.

The second interpretive strategy adopted by UK nuclear
authorities ignored the radioactive plume that had drifted
overhead and turned instead to the issue of Soviet reactor design
and safety procedures. It was emphasized repeatedly that such an
accident could never occur in a British nuclear establishment.
The same line was adopted by the US Council for Energy Awareness,
and maintained until at least 1991. Its Chernobyl Briefing
Book (1991) stressed:

... the Chernobyl-type design is not used anywhere
except the Soviet Union, and could not be licensed to operate
in the United States or other industrial nations in the West
and Far East.... The Chernobyl accident was a unique event,
on a scale by itself. It was the first and only time in the
history of commercial nuclear energy that people were killed.
(US Council for Energy Awareness 1991: 1)40

The third interpretive strategy adopted by Western officials
and supporters of the nuclear power industry was derived from a
Soviet report to the IAEA in Vienna (August 1986). This
highlighted operator error as the cause of the Chernobyl accident
and (correctly) pointed out that several safety features designed
to prevent such an accident were disconnected intentionally at
the time of the reactor test on 25-26 April 1986. Not only was
this fact seized upon by industry analysts; comparisons were
immediately made to show that it would be impossible for
operators to disconnect such a wide array of safety devices on a
Western reactor, which would shut down automatically if such
actions were attempted (Atom No. 368, June 1987: 8).

Finally, the Soviet government, in its international response
to Chernobyl, permitted the IAEA to take on an unprecedented
supervisory role. Members of the agency and its advisors were
given unique access to the Chernobyl area and allowed to carry
out tests and inspections of local residents. Professor
Jovanovich might have been typical of those who took an
optimistic view of the disaster's consequences:

... initially the Soviet authorities were handling the
accident pretty much in the same old way, in isolation, out
of sight of the world community. Thanks to socio-political
changes that have occurred in the Soviet Union since the
accident, the Soviet scientists and politicians, using the
good offices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, got
together with the international professional community and
said "let us work together." Thus the International
Chernobyl Project was born. In my view the greatest benefit
and success of the ICP has been the fact that an open and
sincere international collaboration has been established
among recent Cold War adversaries... (Jovanovich 1991
[draft])

Once again, self-buttressing statements by supporters of the
nuclear industry are apparent: witness the reference to an
"international professional community." Within the
industry, spokespersons are invariably referred to as
"experts" or "professionals," while those
outside the industry (who might be equally cognizant of the
workings of nuclear plants or the effects of radiation) are
dismissed as "nonspecialists,"
"environmentalists," or representatives of the media
looking for horror stories.41

It is apparent that the various "actors" involved in
civilian nuclear accidents act in a remarkably consistent fashion
when confronted with a crisis. Those responsible attempt, as far
as possible, to conceal the extent of the accident and to
promulgate an optimistic view of the situation. Such a reaction,
therefore, was not unique to the Soviet government after
Chernobyl. This author has stated elsewhere that, as a test of
glasnost in the USSR, Chernobyl was a failure.42
However, the reaction of the Soviet authorities - silence until
confronted with incontrovertible proof that radiation had spread
beyond the borders of the USSR - was not dissimilar to that of
Metropolitan Edison in the case of TMI, or of the UKAEA after the
fire at Windscale/Sellafield (President's Commission on the
Accident at Three Mile Island 1979). This does not mean that any
of these organizations were overtly callous or reckless. The
individuals involved most probably believed that the consequences
of the respective accidents could be contained in secret, free
from the attentions of troublesome and irresponsible media. In
all three cases cited, the evident secrecy surrounding the
accidents served to decrease public trust of the industry and to
inflame the media and other interest groups.

The media reacted to the lack of information in two different
ways. First, reporters began to speculate what might have
happened. Such speculations included two reactor explosions at
Chernobyl, mass graves for thousands of victims, a nuclear
meltdown, and similar stories. Apart from the differing scale of
events, this development paralleled what had happened after TMI
seven years earlier. There, an unrelated fire that broke out the
day after the accident was quickly reported as a reactor fuel
fire. Metropolitan Edison was also reported to be burning
radioactive material at night, out of the public eye. Both of
these reports were false, but they were partly a result of
failure to provide timely and accurate information.

Why did the authorities react in such a fashion? There are
several possible reasons. The one that is most often cited (and
it was referred to with regularity after Chernobyl) is that they
wished to avoid panic among the population.43 Ivan
Yemelyanov, one of the designers of the Chernobyl plant and a
deputy director of the USSR Institute of Energy Technology,
informed the Italian Communist Party newspaper, Unita,
that selective information had been released about the accident
in order to forestall panic (Marples 1986: 170). (Literature on
human responses to disaster would suggest that generally
confusion, shock, and trauma are more likely than outright panic,
and the majority of the population in Pripyat appears to have
conformed to this norm.) The most charitable explanation for
holding May Day parades in Kiev and Minsk, only five days after
the accident, is that the Ukrainian and Belarusian governments
were anxious to portray life as "normal."

A second possibility is that such accidents trigger an
inherent "self-protection" mechanism in an offending
industry. Invidious comparisons with competing industries are
often made. Thus, it was pointed out by nuclear advocates that
human casualties in coal and oil production industries are
consistently high. Four deaths per 1,000 tons of coal extracted
is a often-cited toll for Soviet and post-Soviet coal industries
(Marples 1991, ch. 7). In the same way, sympathizers of the
nuclear industry also cite the damage caused to the environment
by coal-fired power stations and note the comparative rarity of
accidents in nuclear plants. The IAEA has been similarly
protective, issuing a much-vaunted study of communities in
Belarus and Ukraine in the summer of 1991 without examining the
two most severely contaminated groups - clean-up crews and
evacuees. Perhaps it is believed that accurate accounts would
create a sensation in the media and that competing industries
would escape similar scrutiny.

Third, there is the question of culpability. Few official
spokespersons are willing to attribute a catastrophe to failed
technology, because the public cannot be left with the perception
that such sophisticated machines are fallible. Further, there is
an understandable reluctance on the part of operators to take the
blame for an accident. The greater the accident, the more likely
it will result in dismissals, official inquiries, and shut-downs.
If the accident, on the other hand, can be contained within a
short period of time, with relatively few casualties, then the
industry can still be considered competent and worthy of support.
The culpability issue is one reason why the number of officially
reported Chernobyl casualties remained at 31 long after even the
most hardboiled officials acknowledged that the real figure was
in the thousands.44 The reliance of Soviet authorities
upon nuclear energy for future energy needs also depended on
avoidance of culpability. Given the problems already being
encountered in other energy resource industries, it was felt that
the future of nuclear energy could not be compromised by
providing a full account of what was then known about the
Chernobyl accident.

Yet it should be reiterated that patterns of response are
similar among all energy industries. Public affairs spokespersons
are selected to provide assurances that the effects of an
accident are limited and being eliminated. Radio and television
reports from such people project an image of calm confidence. In
this way the industry protects itself, like a mother sheltering
her young. At Chernobyl, these various defence mechanisms were to
be put to their severest test.

In certain respects, Chernobyl was a unique accident that
might have been avoided or mitigated by some precautionary
measures. These include the use of less-combustible material on
the roof of the reactor, immediate dispensation of potassium
iodide tablets among population within a radius of at least 100
miles, provision of protective equipment at the reactor site, and
establishment of dispensaries in nearby settlements. Suggestions
for improving recovery are more difficult to make because many of
Chernobyl's ramifications (e.g. tumours and leukaemias) still lie
ahead. In light of these uncertainties the following remarks are
tentative.

1. It would be useful to establish international safety norms
for radiation and other consequences of industrial accidents,
including contamination of soil and water. These would allow
authorities to make prompt decisions about the evacuation of
threatened communities. At Chernobyl, arguably, the initial area
evacuated was much too small, while areas that at present have
the right to be evacuated may be too large. An evacuation is an
event of great stress that should be conducted only when
absolutely necessary.45

2. It is necessary to provide facilities and personnel for
accident response and evacuation in locations that are relatively
close to the hazardous industrial enterprise (e.g. fire and
first-aid crews; vehicular transportation). These resources
should be provided before such an enterprise comes into
operation. Such positioning requires answers to several
questions: in the event of an emergency, how quickly could the
entire workforce (and threatened others) be removed from the
area; by what means; to which localities might they be moved?
Scientists cannot possibly foresee every major accident, but
planners can ensure that employees and local residents have a
reliable means of swift removal from areas at risk.

3. All potentially hazardous facilities need a communications
system linked to appropriate authorities. At Chernobyl, great
confusion was caused by lack of communication among plant
authorities, the local Communist Party organization, and the
affected community. Releases of dangerous substances into the
atmosphere must be reported promptly, through the use of radio
and television networks. The premise here is that delay does not
reduce fear and may generate opposition. Ignorance and fear of
the unknown are more harmful than secrecy.

4. Neighbouring states should be warned promptly in the event
of an industrial accident whose consequences could transcend
national boundaries.

5. If an accident has contaminated the zone around the
industrial enterprise, then no further work should be conducted
in the area. There should be a general shut-down of the affected
enterprise; local farms, schools, and daycare centres; and
general services. Forests and lakes should also be declared off
limits. In order to ensure that such measures are put into
practice, it may be necessary to use the armed forces as well as
regular police.

6. Simple safety procedures should be emphasized before an
evacuation and explained to communities that cannot be evacuated
immediately. These include staying indoors as far as possible,
not consuming food or water from the affected region, and the
washing of steps and entrances to buildings. In the Chernobyl
case, the situation was confusing. Such warnings were issued but
at the same time there were reassuring statements that the water
supply and other critical resources had not been affected.

7. A register of names of affected people should be
established as quickly as possible. Presumably, such a document
could be compiled for communities living in the vicinity of
dangerous enterprises prior to startup. All persons who enter a
hazardous zone should also be registered. Addresses of new homes
for evacuees must also be registered in order to monitor
long-term effects of the accident upon human health. On no
account should such information be classified, unless the
enterprise in question is one that involves national security
considerations.

8. Finally, there should be provision for development of an
international aid system. This is, perhaps, the most
controversial suggestion, especially for advanced industrial
countries, which may decide such a system is superfluous. Yet the
impact of a major nuclear disaster was well beyond the resources
of the USSR, a country that withstood the loss of millions of
people and 50 per cent of its industrial capacity during World
War II. Moreover, Western nuclear stations are often located
closer to major cities than are those of Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union.46 This system of aid could be
jointly administered by United Nations organizations, such as the
IAEA, but it should also include groups that are not connected
with the affected industries. These might be environmental
groups, concerned scientists, and individual experts in specific
industries.

This last point requires further emphasis. One of the
paradoxes revealed by Chernobyl is the supervisory or advisory
role of the IAEA, an organization whose member states are
committed to advancing the cause of nuclear energy. On the
national level, in the former Soviet Union, the nuclear industry
was developed almost exclusively by ministries that sought its
rapid expansion. Today, the Russian nuclear authorities have
revised their planning methods for such enterprises: they must
now be approved by both nuclear agencies and environmental
agencies.47 The last proposal noted above seeks to
extend this reform to accident control: it is essential that the
authorities placed in control of an accident are not supporters
of the affected industrial enterprise or its products. At
Chernobyl, organizations such as Greenpeace International and the
International Red Cross were only belatedly involved in the
response. As Mikhail Gorbachev noted in his 14 May 1986 address
to the Soviet people, it is necessary to involve international
organizations in the resolution of transnational problems. But
those organizations should be broader in scope and more impartial
than the ones that were called to Chernobyl.

In the contemporary world, unforeseen accidents will continue
to happen. Their consequences may be unprecedented and may
involve the rapid spread of hazardous materials. Humankind has
made the decision that it is preferable to run certain risks in
order to possess the material advantages of the modern world.
When so much is at stake in major industrial accidents, secrecy
and lack of accurate information are also commonplace.

Chernobyl remains an object lesson in human inability to deal
with the consequences of its inventions. The accident's results
were made worse by the reaction of the Soviet government and by
the economic and political changes that have occurred in the area
since 1986. On the other hand, even in the worst-affected areas,
Chernobyl has not had a long-term effect on official energy
policy. One of the most surprising events of 1993 was the
decision of the government of Russia to begin a new, ambitious,
nuclear power programme! At the time of writing there are strong
indications that the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania,
and Armenia will soon follow suit (Marples 1993b). Chernobyl
remains a major and pressing problem in all three Slavic states
as the number of related medical illnesses has risen
dramatically. Seven years after the event, there are no obvious
new measures for improving response. The best that can be done is
to offer suggestions that may render a future major accident less
cataclysmic.

1 May. May Day celebrations take place as
planned in Kiev, Minsk, and other cities.

2 May. Politburo members Ryzhkov and Ligachev
visit Chernobyl. A 30 kilometre zone around the reactor
is designated for evacuation.

10 May. The fourth reactor is
"capped" with sand and boron, and leakages of
radiation end.

May-June. Military reservists brought to
Chernobyl to lead the clean-up operation.

August. The Soviet Report on the causes of the
accident is presented to the International Atomic Energy
Agency in Vienna.

December. A concrete roof
("sarcophagus") is completed over the fourth
reactor.

1987

July. Chernobyl director and five plant operators
are found guilty of gross negligence at a trial held
mostly in camera in the town of Chernobyl.

1989

February. The first maps highlighting radiation
fallout from Chernobyl are published in the Soviet press.

1991

April. On the fifth anniversary of Chernobyl there
are mass demonstrations in Kiev and Minsk. The world
press focuses on the event, highlighting new evacuations,
alleged sicknesses in contaminated zones, and the
continuing operation of Soviet RBMK reactors, including
those at Chernobyl.

1992

March. The Ukrainian government reports that
cracks have appeared in the sarcophagus. An international
competition is to be held for a design for a replacement
roof.